Waitlist sees use again, 3 years later

Admissions yield inches slightly higher as nearly 1,050 enroll

For many, the wait was over. But 28 students who held out months longer than everyone else this year finally received welcome news from MIT: they were admitted from the waitlist.

Of those 28 students, 25 are enrolling in the fall. In the preceding two undergraduate admissions cycles, no students were accepted from the waitlist.

In total, MIT currently expects to enroll 1,047 students in the Class of 2018, or 72.4 percent of the 1,447 students accepted, who themselves make up 7.9 percent of the 18,357 applicants. (These figures differ slightly from those in earlier reports because of waitlisted students, students who decide to take a gap year, and other factors.)

Based on these numbers, this year’s overall yield is the highest in MIT’s history, continuing a recent trend of increasing yield numbers. (Last year’s yield rate came out to 72.1 percent after the final enrollment dropped to 1,116 students after The Tech reported the Class of 2017 yield rate.)

The Class of 2018 is slightly smaller than the Classes of 2015, 2016, and 2017, which were admitted between the opening of Maseeh Hall and the closing of Bexley Hall. These three classes each numbered slightly over 1,100 students.

As for the students who were accepted but ultimately decided to go elsewhere, Schmill said that “Two of the more common choices of schools are Stanford and Harvard.”

The Class of 2018 is 48 percent female and 52 percent male; 25 percent of the class is a member of an underrepresented minority (African American, Hispanic, or Native American); 17 percent are first-generation college students; and 9 percent are international students from 54 countries, according to Schmill.

Furthermore, 11 percent of the class self-identifies as African American, 30 percent as Asian American, 14 percent as Hispanic or Latino, 2 percent as Native American, 51 percent as White, and 9 percent as International; 1 percent did not respond. (The figures add up to more than 100 because respondents could select more than one option.)